Company: InMoment, Salt Lake City, UT
Company Description: InMoment is a customer experience optimization platform that gives companies the ability to listen to and engage with customers. Products and services from InMoment include VoC, Social Reviews and Advocacy, Employee Engagement, Support and Consulting. Headquartered in Salt Lake City, InMoment has corporate offices in Mississauga and Toronto, Canada, and Birmingham, UK, with nearly 350 e
Nomination Category: New Product & Service Categories - Software
Nomination Sub Category: New Product or Service of the Year - Software - Relationship Management Solution

Nomination Title: InMoment's Active Listening Suite

Tell the story about this nominated product or service (up to 650 words). Describe its function, features, benefits, and performance to date:

InMoment’s Active Listening Suite applies technology to transform surveys into conversations, helping brands get more actionable information to improve their business, and improve their relationships with customers.

We are living in a time Forrester calls the “Age of the Customer.” Another analyst firm, Gartner, has declared customer experience “the new competitive battleground.” But the most common way of measuring customer experience – surveys -- are boring and can feel like an interrogation. This practice of prioritizing what the brand wants to know above what the customer wants to share often results in insight-poor data, and can actually damage the customer relationships.

InMoment’s Active Listening Suite applies text analytics in a completely new, patent-pending way to get more actionable data, and make the feedback process a more engaging, positive experience for customers. Active Listening includes three features: “Strength Meter,” which taps into the ease and fun of the familiar strength meter to gently encourage customers to keep telling their stories, “Follow Up,” which identifies comments low on insights, and then triggers additional, relevant questions that ask customers to provide more detailed information, and “Drill Down,” which identifies specific words or topics, and presents targeted questions for deeper inquiry. Drill Down can trigger off of both structured data (scores) as well as the unstructured text found in comment boxes.

Vendors who offer customer experience and Voice of Customer solutions often apply a technology called text analytics to large sets of unstructured data (like verbatim comments) to find patterns and trends, and identify positive and negative sentiment in customer comments. This is the first time a vendor has applied real-text analytics to the process of collecting feedback.

The result of this approach is twofold: Customers leave longer, more detailed comments about their experience, giving brands much better information about how to improve the way they do business. Because the follow-up questions key into what customers want to say, versus what just brands want to ask, the experience is more personal and more enjoyable. All too often, brands become so focused on getting data, they forget the feedback process itself is a component of the overall customer relationship. The Active Listening Suite aims to enhance the overall experience for customers, because how you listen really matters.

In real-use cases, InMoment found that clients enjoyed an average of 30 percent richer data (as defined by length and actionable insights) when deploying Active Listening. EXPRESS, the fashion brand, reported a 33 percent increase in survey volume in the first five months of using Active Listening, as well as a 37 percent increase in comment length versus year-ago.

With companies worldwide spending billions each year to improve customer experiences ($3.77B in 2014 according to Research & Markets), the market that can benefit from this innovation is massive.

Thanks to this new listening technology, brands can get the best data, take the wisest actions and create a more meaningful relationship with their customers in the process. This technology addresses the ever-growing need for relevant and detailed customer information, which is crucial for brands to continually improve and be in tune with their customers.

In bullet-list form, briefly summarize up to ten (10) of the chief features and benefits of the nominated product or service (up to 150 words).

• In the rush to get more data, brands are damaging relationships with customers
• Measuring customers’ experiences with traditional metrics alone can make scores the goal, instead of great, differentiated experiences
• Active Listening -- a philosophy supported by tech, keeping human relationships at the center of the customer experience
• Patent-pending; The first time text analytics are being applied to the feedback process itself
• Interrogation to Conversations: Relevant interactions transform the survey experience
• Matters Most: Interactions stay focused on the topics most important to customers – and thus most effective in improving their experiences.
• Relationships: Instead of harming the brand-customer relationships, Active Listening is built to enhance it
• Results: More comments, better comments. Active Listing produces about 30 percent richer insights. Fashion Brand EXPRESS enjoyed a 33 percent increase in survey volume in the first five months of using Active Listening, as well